Vol 115 — Issue 02
Huntsville, Texas
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
WHAT’S ON THE WEB
FEATURE PRESENTATION
INDEX
Nation & World...page 4
Visit our website to participate in our latest poll or post your comments on the stories in this issue at houstonianonline.com!
Entertainment editor Kevin Jukkola shares his passion for crazy heart.
Viewpoints................page2
Entertainment........page 5
SEE page 5
Campus................page 3
Sports....................page 6
A l l t h e K i n g ’s M e n While a nation remembers a legacy, an SHSU professor recalls Baker’s movement in Huntsville. By Kristin Meyer Senior Reporter
"I have a dream..." One of the most memorable phrases in American history was said by a man who denounced violence, but in the end was destroyed by it. Martin Luther King Jr. made great strives in the fight for desegregation of America, and his name was added amongst other revolutionary African Americans, including Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, to the history books of America. The son of Georgians, Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in January 1969 in Atlanta. The eldest child in his family, King soared academically and graduated from high school in 1944 at the age of fifteen. He stayed home for college, which probably relieved his parents during wartime. He entered Morehouse College, his father's alma mate, graduating three years later at the age of eighteen with a bachelor's degree in Sociology in 1947. Around this time he became
an ordained minister. He was a third generation minister-his father pastored one of the largest congregations in the city, Ebenezer Baptist Church; his maternal grandfather was also a pastor of Ebenezer. In college, King perfected his public speaking skills and began studying the principles of non-violence, particularly the techniques of India's Mohandas Gandhi. King began pastoring at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. The church, with its large educated, middle-class congregation, searched for an impressive, vibrant minister who was new to the city. Several groups in the church and in the community, from college professor Jo Ann Robinson's Women's Political Council and Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porter union member Edgar D. Nixon of the Montgomery Voter's League to Rosa Parks of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), worked to mortally wound institutionalized racism and
racial segregation. "The young Dr. King, a newcomer to the city with no enemies, became the steering wheel that led Montgomery's successful bus boycott drive in late 1956," said Bernadette Pruitt, history professor and the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in history from the University of Houston. "The boycott, which lasted more than a year, catapulted the young pastor, husband, and father into national prominence. He created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 to bring churches and ministers together in an effort to fight discrimination." His star continued to shine as the modern-day Civil Rights Movement stirred the soul of a nation and world. "Ironically, King's message of love, hope and faith angered millions--black and nonblack," said Pruitt. "White southerners, hardly surprising, resisted desegregation and believed strongly in the doctrine of white supremacy. Many blacks, particularly
middle-class professionals, clergy; rank and file workers, feared job losses, violence, or worse." These issues affected many in the 1950s and 1960s and because of the controversy over civil rights among the black community, the largest African-American organization in the US, the National Baptist Convention, broke up. In Huntsville, Texas, I.e., World War II veteran and chemical engineer Wendell H. Baker and wife Augusta Baker paid the poll taxes of hundreds of African-American residents in an effort to bolster political mobilization among the blacks, said Pruitt. Baker, now 87, lost his teaching job with the Huntsville Independent School District in 1961 because he began building a brick home near developing all-white subdivisions in western Huntsville/Walker County. — See KING, page 4
A thought for your penny As death tolls to an estimated 200,000 in Haiti, Bearkats offer a paw to assist survivors in desperate need of donations. By Meagan Ellsworth Editor-in-Chief
As the world mourns the loss of so many lives following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, students and organizations at Sam Houston find themselves digging deep into their and pockets to help out. While there is multiple organizations on campus taking donations, students interested in donating can find Alpha Kappa Alpha
having another drive to help Haiti this Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the LSC mall area. “We had one last Friday, January 15, for our sorority’s founder’s day, and it went really well for a Friday afternoon. People were really generous in their donations,” Titus said. Due to problems with shipping, Titus said they will only be taking monetary donations. If a students misses the
drive in the mall area, but is still interested in donating they can contact any member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. “I hope others will take part, and do what they can,” Titus said.
For more information please contact Jessica Titus by email at jlt009@shsu.edu.
For more ways to help individuals may contact the American Red Cross. •
Visit www.redcross. org. Look for the “Donate Now” link at the top of the page.
•
Text “HAITI” to 9-0-9-9-9 to make a $10 contribution
Turn to page 4 for the latest
Photo courtesy of The Associated Press
“People, one holding up a knife, fight for goods taken from collapsed stores in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010. U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the capital said popular anger is rising and warned authorities and aid organizations to increase security to guard against looting after Tuesday’s earthquake.”
Photo courtesy of The Associated Press
A Changing Industry The uncertain future of print is analyzed as an advanced society becomes more technologically obsessed. By Brittany Pires
Advertising Manager
We all know how it was in the past. The days of the little boy on the busy street corner, waving a newspaper in his hand; yelling “Extra, extra! Read all about it!” The father with his coffee in one hand and the local paper in the other. A young college student scanning the classifieds for work. Those days have certainly changed. To some, the newspaper industry has merely become an outdated media source that has been replaced by technology, with no where to go but down. But to the hopefuls, the future of newspapers is optimistic. “My message is just the opposite,” founder and managing director of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch said in his Wall Street Journal article, Journalism and Freedom. “The future of journalism is more promising than ever-limited only by editors unwilling to fight for their readers, or government using its heavy hand either to over-regulate or subsidize us.” With the economy in a poor state, newspapers have taken a huge blow to both advertising revenue and subscriptions. It is no wonder so many have lost their jobs and major newspapers are going under. According to the Washington Post, U.S. newspaper circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades, as papers across the country lost 10.6 percent of their paying readers from April through Sept., compared with a year earlier. “Newspapers have suffered through a ‘double whammy’,” Huntsville Item publisher Dennis Garrison said. “When the economy slowed, real
estate and retail advertisers were not seeing the public spending much money with them. When people don’t spend money in stores, the advertisers don’t advertise. That’s why we are in the shape we are in.” However, it is the national and major-metro newspapers that are suffering far more than the local ones. While the larger newspapers have to compete with other forms of the media for readers, the success of community newspapers is based on the “local news” that does not affect the world as a whole. Even the use of the Internet to expand print newspapers does not compare to the local coverage that community newspapers have access to. “I believe the larger newspapers are suffering because they will see a bigger decline in subscriptions as the population in larger cities tends to prefer reading news online,” Kingwood High School Newspaper Advisor Michelle Palmer said. “Smaller newspapers tend to be exclusive to small towns, where the population, in my opinion, tends to prefer reading in print rather than online.” A major difference from the Internet to print is the lack of regulations of what can be published on websites and what cannot. When the public searches for news online, they are faced with bloggers and opinion news that is more likely aiming to persuade the reader to think a certain way about a story. Newspapers are run with a sense of integrity that the Internet has not truly been exposed to. Take the Super Bowl, for example.
— See SURVIVAL, page 4